Song Seekers
by turbomun
Summary: At the end of the war, Homeworld created a song that tore apart every gem on Earth. Thousands of years later, those who remain set off to find the song that will put them back together.
1. New Day

_A/N: First of all, I 'd like to thank you all for your support of my oneshot "The Fourth Time's the Charm", and I'm sorry to keep you waiting for so long! I've been eager to start this, but I wanted to wait for the end of Season 3, and now I'm glad I did. (As of this writing, the last aired episode was "Bubbled.") You can consider this as an AU that takes place after Season 3 - an alternate Season 4, if you will._

 _This takes place after "The Fourth Time's the Charm", but everything from that oneshot will be explained here, so it's not exactly required reading._

* * *

It had been four weeks, two days, and eighteen hours since Centi's last complete reversion.

She knew because she'd made up a chart for herself on a sheet of paper from the ream that Steven had brought her. At first it had been difficult to keep track of her transformations, since she only had useable hands about half the time, but it became increasingly easy as the days passed. And for the last month or so, it had been a cakewalk. Still, the chart remained, hanging up among the dozens of other pictures she'd plastered across the walls of her ship's anteroom – as if her ability to keep herself together was another artistic achievement worthy of admiration.

To celebrate, she was making a self-portrait.

The door was open, and she knelt in the pool of vegetation-suffused sunlight that it provided, hunched over her current work-in-progress. A few visits ago, Steven had given her a new material to draw on, which he called 'poster board'; it was bigger than ordinary paper, and thicker, with a softly corrugated texture that was almost like fabric. Since receiving it, she'd been fervently contemplating what she'd use it for, certain that a special material like this deserved a special purpose. Well, now she was taking a chance, hoping that her hands would remain sure and steady and that she wouldn't end up with a wonky, unpresentable drawing like she had so many times before.

Her eye was just about finished now. With a pencil (which, she'd learned, was like a crayon, except that it gave you the ability to delete your work and try again, a _very_ useful feature) she scratched in a snub nose near the center of her face, adding a curve beneath it to represent her smiling mouth. Everything looked good so far. Soon she'd be done with the lines, and then she could start trying to paint it, which was the fun part because paints could cover whole entire areas of the page instead of just –

A succession of screeches snapped her attention to the world outside the ship.

"Coming, I'm coming!" called Centi, hurriedly grabbing the corners of her poster board. After ensuring that it was careful stashed against the wall with her other unfinished work, she scurried outside, the daylight flashing against her eye. Anybody else would find Neph and Phrita's noises to be incomprehensible, but even in her current state, she found that she still understood them perfectly. And she always dropped whatever she was doing when they announced that there were visitors, because she always knew exactly who it was going to be.

Foresight didn't stop her hands from coming up and flapping a few times with excitement. "Hello, Steven!" she called, thrusting an arm into the air to wave to him.

Steven smiled and waved back. He was making his way through the small stretch of jungle leading up to the ship, greeting Neph and Phrita first, who'd been outside already and so had seen him arrive. Right now, Neph had three malformed arms on one side of her body and an insectile thorax, while Phrita's head had taken on the buggy form that Centi had grown very familiar with, but he still talked to them as if both were equally capable of answering before running to meet Centi.

"Hey there!" he exclaimed. "Wow, you look good today!"

Centi beamed, holding out her arms as if to showcase herself. "It has been a good day," she agreed. When she went to sleep last night, she'd had four arms and a reverted leg, but those had vanished overnight…and her head had been the same for a good three days now. "Steven, I am doing an artwork with the poster board you gave me! Will you come and see?"

"Yeah, sure I will, Centi!" he replied, then glanced over his shoulder. "But…um…"

She followed his gaze curiously, and was taken aback to note that he hadn't come alone today. One of his friends, the tallest one with the gauntlets, was here too. And she was stepping through the undergrowth like her body was a knife that sliced through all obstacles.

"Centi, you remember Garnet, right?" asked Steven hopefully. "You've met her a few times."

Centi nodded wordlessly, her eye fixed on the statuesque gem. She'd had a few encounters with Garnet since the beginning of her recovery, but Garnet never said much, and Centi had always been rather intimidated by her.

From behind her visor, Garnet must have noticed Centi's shoulders hunching up, her feet shuffling in miniscule intervals, because she smiled serenely. "Hello there. You're Nephrite, correct?"

"Correct." Centi bobbed her head subserviently. "But everyone now calls me 'Centi.'"

"Centi," repeated Garnet. "I'll remember that." She looked Centi up and down, scrutinizing a body that was weakened and battle-beaten, but revealed no traces of corruption – not at the moment, anyway. Then she dipped her chin at Steven in a gesture of approval.

Steven cleared his throat and straightened up. "So!" he started, with a fake brightness that didn't befit his genuinely cheerful personality. "Um, I didn't…I didn't come here for a normal visit today. Not that I don't love seeing you, 'cause I do! But…me and Garnet wanted to talk to you about something."

"Like what?" said Centi warily. _My corruption? Did you find out something else about my condition? Is this going to be bad news…?!_

Garnet shook her head briskly, a silent denial of Centi's concerns before she had even voiced them. "Steven tells me that you've been doing better lately," she stated.

"Yes," answered Centi. "I haven't even fully reverted since…four weeks, two days, and eighteen hours ago."

"That's good." Garnet bent down slightly, so that her face was more on the level with Centi's, though Centi still had the unavoidable sensation of being looked down upon. "You've reverted less and less since Steven healed you a few months ago." It wasn't a question.

Centi didn't answer. What could she say when Garnet seemed to know everything already? Maintaining eye contact terrified her, but somehow, it seemed like she couldn't even blink.

Garnet was silent as well, making Centi feel as if she was being stared through rather than at. But finally Garnet stood tall again, placing her hands on her hips. "You're almost stable," she proclaimed. "And I think you're stable enough to join us."

"Join…you?" echoed Centi.

For the first time, she managed to drag her gaze away, and it landed instinctively on Neph and Phrita. Her two crewmembers were standing at attention, in a stance that she recognized from the days when Homeworld superiors would come and speak to her, hanging on every word without making a single verbal contribution of their own. Phrita wasn't even chattering or clicking. Centi saw her concern echoed back at her in their altered faces; was Garnet talking about taking her somewhere else, away from her ship and her crew? But they were happy here…!

"Yeah, join us on a mission!" Steven piped up quickly, grabbing her arm without warning. "We're starting this big…thing…today, and we want you to help us!"

"Help you?" she repeated. Her brow arched, hovering above her eye.

The corner of Garnet's mouth twitched. "What is it? You don't want to?"

"No, no!" said Centi quickly. Wait, that sounded like she was definitely refusing…! "I mean, no, it's not that…! I just don't see at all how _I_ could help _you_ when I'm corrupted!"

The effects of corruption stretched beyond inconvenient physical transformations, after all. Through various experiments over the past several months, Centi had figured out that she was weaker than she used to be, quicker to tire, and unable to even draw her weapon without major repercussions. Not only that, but her mind had shifted, seemingly drawing in an unprecedented amount of information from her senses…but instead of making her intuitive, she was rendered hypersensitive to sounds and smells, as well as constantly questioning apparently contradictory stimuli. As a captain, she'd been designed to make fast judgments on matters that would make or break her ship and crew; now there were too many times where she felt like her brain had been rubbed raw, overwhelmed by the simple variations of day-to-day existence.

Her eye dropped to the ground instinctively. "There's nothing I can do that…that one of you can't do better," she added, lacking the words to describe her thought processes any further.

"I don't believe that," said Garnet.

Centi blinked. Steven immediately contributed as well, exclaiming, "I don't believe that either! You're not the only one of my friends who's thought something like that, Centi, and it's never true!"

"Besides," continued Garnet, "the subject of our mission is gem corruption."

Centi perked slightly. She was, while not exactly making eye contact, no longer eyeballing her feet. Gem corruption…even as a corrupted gem, she had so little insight into the details of her condition. What had the Diamonds done to her? Why did the changes so obstinately refuse to retreat, clinging to her mind like a layer of black sludge, ready to engulf her whenever she let her guard down? Why wasn't Steven able to fully heal her, or any other corrupted gem, for that matter? Could corruption even be reversed at all?

The Crystal Gems had admitted their equal ignorance in the matter. During her entire recovery process, all of them had been feeling their way along in the dark, always afraid that one day Centi would wake up as a centipeedle and never show any further signs of her true form. It had been long enough now that such a grim possibility now seemed much less plausible, but she still wasn't completely better, not by a long shot. Some answers would certainly be nice.

"What about gem corruption, exactly?" she ventured to ask.

Steven opened his mouth to reply, but Garnet halted him by resting a hand on his hair. "We're about to hold a meeting with the other Crystal Gems to talk about it," she responded. "We came to see if you would like to attend. It will be better to explain everything all at once."

"You should come!" said Steven with an encouraging smile. "Besides, you'll get to meet everybody, and I haven't gotten to introduce you yet!"

That meant that there would be other gems at the meeting besides Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl, who were the only ones that Centi had seen so far. What were these strangers going to think of her? How could she possibly present herself to them in a way that wouldn't leave them disgusted, or horrified? How –

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Garnet assured her. "If you don't feel like you're ready, that's fine. But don't worry about whether or not you're good enough, because you are. And I can see that no matter what happens, you would be a big help to us."

Centi looked at Steven. He mouthed the words _future vision_ , his eyes sparkling.

"I…" Centi hesitated, then finally conceded, "I guess it wouldn't hurt…to go to the meeting, at least."

"All right!" cheered Steven. Suddenly he had wound both hands around her arm and was dragging her forward, forcing her to stumble along after him. "This is gonna be awesome! And everyone is gonna love you!"

Sensing that the serious part of the conversation was over, Neph and Phrita suddenly began gurgling for attention. Phrita clicked and gestured emphatically, while Neph, her language abilities still not quite recovered from corruption, asked repeatedly in her garbled voice, "Us, too? What of us…?"

"Sorry, you two," said Garnet, quieting them with nothing more than her words and a soothing smile. "I don't think you're quite ready to join this mission yet. Maybe soon, but for now, just wait here at the ship. We'll bring your captain back soon."

"We will wait," agreed Neph. She stuck out her hand to bid goodbye to Centi, and Phrita copied her. "Goodbye, Captain!"

"See you soon!" called Centi, still being whisked away towards the warp pad by Steven.

She hoped that was true, anyway. She wasn't sure how long she could bear to be away from everything she knew, everything that had become her life now. For the first time in thousands of years, she had a home; she had compatriots; she even had her ship back, although it was far from airworthy, and she was happy to share it all with part of her crew. But she supposed that she'd always known that it was a tenuous situation. Everything was so transitional right now, including her own body and mind. The only thing constant was change.

So she went with Steven, hoping he would understand that as a corrupted gem, she wasn't yet ready for anything too drastic.


	2. The Others

Centi had only been to Steven's home a handful of times, the day when he'd healed her being among them. One of the numerous issues with being corrupted was that she was unable to use warp pads; gem technology saw right through her, never caring how normal she appeared to be, only how twisted she was on the inside. So while she would have visited him much more frequently if she could have, she was instead forced to wait for the occasions when he came to her, and very rarely did he choose to bring her back here.

She stepped off the Warp Pad uncertainly, glancing around the wooden structure full of all sorts of foreign human things. A sensation of intrusion, of being in a totally unfitting environment, began to creep up on her…and the fact that there were other gems around didn't help things.

"Here we are!" Steven sang out, prancing into the living room. "We're back! And Centi's with us!"

Amethyst, Centi's second most common visitor next to Steven, hopped off the kitchen counter and lifted her hand by way of greeting. "Yo!"

"Hello," said Centi, offering her a feeble little wave.

Next to Amethyst was the tall pale gem called Pearl, whose hair and clothes were arranged with painful perfection, and whose eyes widened when she spotted Centi. "Oh! When Steven said that you were doing better, he wasn't kidding!"

Centi smiled and tried to force herself to make eye contact.

While she'd never seen any Crystal Gems besides Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, she'd taken "everyone is having a meeting" to mean that other gems would be gathering from the corners of planet, their ranks greatly depleted from the war but still amounting to…she wasn't sure how many she'd expected, really. At least a couple dozen. But the only new additions to the team were two gems sitting on the couch where she had once used crayons to draw her life's story: a slender blue one, whose dress gave her an aristocratic look, and a small lime-green one who Centi didn't recognize at all.

Steven made a beeline for these two gems, gesturing extravagantly between them and Centi. "Looks like everybody's here! Guys, meet Centi! Centi, meet Lapis and Peridot!"

"Hi," said the blue one, Lapis.

Peridot, the green one, narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What kind of gem is 'Centi'?" she demanded.

Centi lifted her eye. "I'm Nephrite, Facet Seven, Cut Two Seven One Six," she recited. The name that had once rolled off of her tongue with ease now gummed in her mouth like gibberish. "But everyone calls me Centi now."

Peridot's lips pushed together. "How do you get 'Centi' from 'Nephrite'? That doesn't sound the same at all!"

"It's short for 'Centipeedle," she admitted.

"What?"

"Guys, Centi is a corrupted gem," interrupted Steven. "She used to be a monster called a centipeedle. But she's healed now…mostly. And she's gonna help us a lot with our mission! Just, y'know, it's something to keep in mind."

"Woah!" Peridot leaned forward, her knees folded under her, her hands pressed flat against the coffee table. "You're one of those corrupted gems?! But you don't _look_ corrupted!"

Centi huffed out a sigh. "Wait."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Everyone, please take your seats," announced Garnet, stepping forward to address everyone, as if this were an official meeting in a war room instead of a bunch of rebels sitting in somebody's front parlor. Amethyst and Pearl settled in on the vacant side of the L-shaped couch, leaving the only empty seat between Lapis and Peridot. Centi took it reluctantly, her thighs pressed together, her feet swinging silently beneath her. Steven remained standing near the coffee table.

Garnet placed her hands on her hips, surveying the gems gathered before her. "So," she began. "It's good to see us all together. All of the Crystal Gems in one place, at last."

Centi shifted. _I'm not a Crystal Gem, though…_

"Our main objective for many centuries has been capturing and bubbling the corrupted gem monsters that roam this planet," continued Garnet. "Once we bubble them, that is the end of their journey. We held out hope that we would discover a way to heal them, but after Rose Quartz tried and failed to do so, many times, we began to think it was impossible. Until very recently."

Steven was nodding vigorously, his eyes bright with rapture.

Garnet gestured to Centi. "This Nephrite was a monster like any other. Even Steven had managed no better than to tame her...until six months ago. He healed her. It didn't seem to work at first, and we thought that recovering from corruption was still a lost cause. Yet look at her now."

Too many eyes, crawling all over Centi like a million miniature centipeedles. She kept her gaze fixed on her feet. It wasn't that Garnet hadn't spoken the truth – but did these other gems understand that Centi wasn't fully healed? That she was still corrupted, body and mind, just in a more insidious way?

"That's enough looking," said Garnet, a bit sharply, and the eyes all skittered away.

"Now. As I was saying, we have finally seen that corrupted gems can come back to themselves, remember who they were before. But it's a process that takes months, and there are so many corrupted gems in the bubble room. Ideally, what we need is a way to turn them all back at the same time, perhaps as swiftly as Homeworld corrupted them in the first place."

"I don't think I have enough spit in my mouth to heal every monster in the bubble room," agreed Steven.

Amethyst sat forward. "Hey, G. Like you said, we've been poofing monsters forever. Why are we just now starting to think about this again?"

Garnet adjusted her glasses. "Because we had become numb to what they really were. But Steven hadn't. Now Centi is a reminder of what lies at the heart of every corrupted gem. And, because for the first time since the mass corruption, Homeworld has started to take an interest in the Earth again."

"We've seen so many corrupted gems that they all just began to look like big, stupid monsters," admitted Pearl softly.

"They _are_ just big, stupid monsters – " Peridot started, before cutting herself off, her cheeks darkening. "Oh. Uh, present company excluded, of course."

Centi had stiffened over the course of the conversation. Her shoulders were high with tension, her fingertips digging into her knees, but she had remained silent…until Peridot's little slip-up. Then her head snapped up, her mouth forming a small but grave scowl.

"Corrupted monsters aren't stupid!" she proclaimed fiercely. "I've been one, and…it's harder to think, but I _was_ still thinking! It's like, the whole time, you're just struggling, and you realize that something is wrong, but you don't know what, but then sometimes you figure out who you're supposed to be and you try to be that gem again, but you _can't_! Because your own mind won't let you and it's all out of your control…!"

She broke off, certain that her impassioned outburst had sounded like nothing but nonsensical word vomit. Certainly everyone was staring at her like she was completely incomprehensible. But while she was still trying to decipher their expressions, Garnet extended one finger and pointed at her, slowly and deliberately.

" _That_ is why we are trying to heal the other corrupted gems," she stated. "She said it better than I ever could."

Much to Centi's surprise, everyone began to bob their heads in agreement. Steven smiled encouragingly, like he was proud that she'd been brave enough to voice her feelings, and now Peridot was the one looking at the floor. When Centi caught Lapis's eye, the blue gem's expression didn't change, but she did flash a quick and stalwart thumbs up.

"Not to mention," Pearl piped up, "many of those corrupted monsters used to be Crystal Gems. If Homeworld _does_ try anything big, like they've been leading up to, it would be nice to have more friends to stand by our side."

"I would love to meet them!" exclaimed Steven. "But…what about the Homeworld gems?"

Garnet nodded. "Homeworld gems. Like Centi. Centi, would you say that you still consider yourself loyal to Homeworld?"

"No," answered Centi immediately. It was an easy question. She'd spent the whole war, a fight she hadn't even been made for, as an unthinking little pawn in Homeworld's hands, only to be punished for her obedience and her commitment to her crew; corruption had stripped her of all devotion to the Diamond Authority.

"I suspect that many corrupted gems will feel the same way," said Garnet.

"Not all of them," murmured Steven, so uncharacteristically somber for a moment that Centi couldn't help wondering if he had someone specific in mind.

"Not all of them," agreed Garnet. "But many of them will. Homeworld may have lied to everyone else about what they did to the gems on Earth, but they can't lie to their own victims."

Centi blinked. _Homeworld may have lied to everyone else…_?

She wasn't going to say anything, but then Garnet stared straight at her and prompted, "Did you have a question?"

"Um. Yes." Centi gripped a few strands of her shock of white hair and began to fiddle with them. "What do you mean, Homeworld lied to everyone else…?"

Sensing her opportunity to redeem herself, Peridot sprang to her feet, so that she was standing on the couch cushion with her feet spread apart. "I'm a newer Homeworld gem, and all I ever heard about the war was that gems were wiped out on Earth. I didn't even know that corruption was something that could happen until a few months ago!"

"Plus Jas – um, someone else who wasn't so new didn't know that the Diamonds had caused Earth gems to be corrupted, either," added Steven.

Centi's mouth dropped open. "You mean…the Diamonds did this to us, and…they didn't even have the courage to own up to it?!" she cried. "That's… _disgusting_!"

"It is. And I dare say that you aren't the only Homeworld gem who will think so," said Garnet.

Amethyst pumped her fist in the air. "Looks like the Crystal Gems might be getting some new recruits! Aw yeah!"

"Only if we succeed," Pearl reminded her. She stood up, delicate fingers adjusting her sash before she spoke again. "Let's refocus our attention, shall we?"

Centi forced her hands to unclench and went back to picking at her hair. She didn't have to sit back and deal with injustices anymore, she reminded herself, not with the Crystal Gems. They'd do…well, she didn't know exactly what, but _something_ about it.

"Thanks to some excellent anecdotal evidence from our guest here" – Pearl nodded in Centi's direction – "we know the method that Homeworld used to corrupt the gems."

"A song," murmured Centi.

"A song," echoed Pearl. "But specifically, a specially configured array of sound waves with a lasting terminal effect on every gem exposed to it. We were already aware that certain sound combinations can have a short-term negative impact on gems – "

Steven suddenly gasped. "The gem destabilizer that Homeworld used!" he realized aloud. "It was a tuning fork!"

"Exactly!" shouted Peridot. "We used sound to temporarily destroy a gem's physical form. Simple, but effective!"

Pearl cleared her throat. "Ahem! We knew that small examples like the gem destabilizer were possible, but whatever Homeworld used was a billion times larger, and also a billion times more precise. It was able to cause permanent damage, to the point where only now, thousands of years later, we have an example of a gem who is recovering from it! No traditional method has been able to completely heal damage from the Diamonds. So Garnet and I put our heads together, thinking of another way to deal with this, and we thought: surely Homeworld must have at least a rudimentary idea of how to solve the problem! Even knowing exactly how they achieved the corruption would be a help! And then I realized that if Homeworld _did_ have a way to reverse corruption, I can almost guarantee that I know what it is."

"What is it, then?" demanded Steven excitedly.

"A song!" responded Pearl. "A healing song, if you will!"

"One song to corrupt, one song to heal," added Garnet. "I think it makes sense."

Centi sat back, her fingers still twisted up in her hair. It _did_ make sense. The best solutions, she had learned from her time as a pilot, were usually the simplest ones – and this one certainly had simplicity on its side. But one huge question still remained…

"How are we gonna find this song?" asked Steven. "I mean, it wouldn't be just a normal song, right?"

Pearl shook her head. "No, of course not. However, that's where all of us come in!"

"All of us will need to work together if we are to get such vital information out of Homeworld," Garnet said. "It will require strength – bravery – ingenuity – intelligence – and technical skill. You must decide now if you would like to join the mission or not. No one will be forced to join, but I will say that it will be much more difficult if any one of you refuses."

"Well, count me in!" declared Amethyst. "I'm not letting you guys go anywhere without me!"

"I have both intelligence and technical skill!" asserted Peridot. "And also some of those other things you mentioned, probably. I'll join up!"

Lapis looked between Peridot and Steven, then shrugged. "Yeah, I will too, I guess."

"You know I will!" proclaimed Steven, before his eyes flitted towards the couch expectantly. "What about you, Centi?"

Centi's feet were constantly fidgeting now, her hair entwined around her fingers. She didn't want to disappoint anybody…but…! "I…I'm not sure if you really want me to be a part of the mission," she stammered.

Steven frowned. "What are you talking about? Of course we do!"

"But I'm not particularly…brave or smart or ingenuous…I'm definitely not strong…I don't even have any abilities anymore! I'm just…"

She froze. Her hand, the one in her hair, had started to tingle in a telltale way. She wrenched it free, just in time for the tingling to rocket down the entire length of the arm, all the way up to her elbow…and moments later, it visibly spluttered and flickered, before finally reforming as an insect leg.

Well, her form _had_ been way more stable than usual today. She should have seen _that_ coming. The others, however, were a little less used to her routine regressions.

Peridot jumped up again, her hands clasped to either side of her face. "Oh my stars!" she gasped. Lapis shifted away from Centi slightly, regarding the corrupted gem with confusion and fear, and even Pearl and Amethyst looked concerned. Centi drew her reverted arm against her chest as Steven sprang forward and cried, "Everyone, don't freak out! It's fine! This is…normal."

"It doesn't _look_ normal!" shrieked Peridot.

Centi groaned quietly. "I told you that I was corrupted, didn't I? It passes, in a few hours, usually."

"A few _hours_?!" echoed Peridot incredulously.

"Well, it used to be a few days or a few _weeks_ , so I think this is an improvement!" snapped Centi, more angrily than she'd intended to.

"Guys, stop!" pleaded Steven, but Centi had heard enough. She stood up and strode towards the Warp Pad, where she plopped down, head bowed and arms curled awkwardly against her.

It was mere seconds before Steven joined her, sympathy oozing from his eyes like invisible tears.

"Steven, this is never going to work," sighed Centi, in a tone that was almost a whisper. "Your friends all think I'm a freak."

"They don't think you're a freak," insisted Steven. "And Peridot didn't mean any harm! She's just not used to being around a gem like you, and sometimes, she says things that sound bad without meaning to. It was just an accident!"

"But you saw the way she looked at me! And how everyone else looked at me! They know I'm just a…a useless, corrupted _creature_!"

Steven started to protest, but before he could get a sound out, the sound of footsteps behind him drew his attention. Centi didn't look up, assuming that Garnet had arrived to espouse more wisdom about believing in yourself, but it turned out not to be Garnet at all.

It was Amethyst.

"Yo," she said, settling down cross-legged beside Centi. "What's up, corrupted homegirl?"

Centi stared at her lap. "You saw what was up."

"Yeah, your arm got a little buggy. No big deal." Amethyst prodded her shoulder lightly. "Look, first of all, don't be so down on yourself. Second, I'll be straight with you here if no one else will: we really want you to be a part of this mission with us. We _need_ you to, as a matter of fact."

"Why?" demanded Centi. "You would all be better off without me getting in the way! You saw what happened when I tried to draw my weapon! I'm just…" She fumbled for words, both her brain and her mouth failing her.

Amethyst shook her head firmly. "You're not _just_ anything. You're you! You're a friggin' spaceship captain and you know more about corruption than just about anyone, because you've lived it! Don't you think that could kind of come in handy?"

Centi didn't reply.

"Besides," continued Amethyst. "If we _do_ find this song…that would mean we get to heal you and your pals back at the spaceship. That'd be pretty cool, right?"

…silently, Centi lifted her head. Somehow, in all the talk of finding a secret song that the Diamonds had hidden, she'd missed the obvious implication: that she would be among the corrupted gems who were permanently healed. And not just her, but Neph and Phrita and other members of her crew who might have been stranded on Earth and so many other gems who'd been abandoned by Homeworld…

"…I guess…that would be nice," she admitted.

Amethyst grinned. "Does that mean you'll come along for the ride, then?"

Centi looked back and forth, between Steven and Amethyst, both of them regarding her hopefully. It was so hard to tell people's intentions now, with her unfortunate tendency towards sensory overload, but they _looked_ genuine enough…

…and she really did hate disappointing people.

"Okay," she conceded. "I will…I will try."

"Yay!" cheered Steven. Amethyst's grinned widened, and slapped Centi a high five. Centi just smiled at both of them bashfully.

"So what happens now?" she asked, getting to her feet after a long pause.

"Not sure, but…I bet it's gonna be training!" said Steven. "And since you can't draw your weapon, you should come training with me! I can help you figure out something to do!"

"Um…" Not being able to draw her weapon wasn't her only shortcoming. "Actually, Steven…"

"Oh, and there's awesome prizes!" he continued cheerfully, grabbing her hand to drag her back towards the couch. "You're going to love them!"

"Prizes?" she echoed, baffled.

"Yeah! Prizes from Pearl! See, let me explain to you about Pearl Points…"


	3. Zero Point Warrior

_A/N: Hello readers! It was really great to see you guys sharing your thoughts in the comments last chapter! I wanted to take a moment to address a few things that were brought up by multiple people:_

 _First of all, it was pointed out to me that Lapis isn't an "official" Crystal Gem, not the way that Peridot is. However, she's definitely one of their allies, and the mission in Song Seekers is a big one that the Gems would need to call on all of their allies for. Lapis is barely in this story anyway, so don't worry too much about her._

 _Some of you also wanted to know about Jasper and Bismuth. They will most certainly be addressed (particularly Jasper, for obvious reasons) but I can neither confirm nor deny that either of them will be appearing here._

 _Finally, I do plan to follow the canon as closely as I can, given that this is an AU - as more Season 4 episodes air, I'll more than likely wind up incorporating elements from those, but nothing that happens in Season 4 is considered "canon" to Song Seekers. Also, I love seeing everybody's ideas and headcanons! I do have a more or less definite plot for this story, but I'm always open to suggestions, so feel free to keep sharing; I can't guarantee that I'll end up using anything, but your comments are always considered and always appreciated!_

* * *

Two hours later, Centi's arm had recovered, and it was now holding a sabre in a tight, anxious grip. The weapon felt foreign in her hand; it was like when Steven first brought her art materials, and crayons and pencils and paintbrushes all felt clunky and awkward, except that art materials didn't have the potential to run somebody through.

The doubt on her face was starkly contrasted by Steven's eager encouragement and Pearl's confidence as they stood in front of her, side by side…and next to Pearl was another figure, a translucent red-eyed duplicate of her. 'Holo-Pearl' also held a sabre, and every so often the doppleganger would flicker and bellow, "DO YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT?" The three of them – er, three and a half of them? – had gathered in a sky-high ruin that was apparently the preferred place of training for the Crystal Gems.

"So if I defeat this hologram, I receive one 'Pearl Point'?" asked Centi dubiously.

"Yes," Pearl confirmed. "Normally I'd have you compete against Steven, but today is all about figuring out what your strengths are and what kind of weapons you're comfortable with, so we'll just stick to exploration for now. If you can beat Holo-Pearl, you'll get a Pearl Point, and three Pearl Points can be redeemed for valuable prizes!" She patted her fanny pack proprietorially.

Centi frowned, lowering her sabre for a moment. "But what if it defeats me?"

"There's only a very slight chance that she can inflict serious damage," answered Pearl in what was probably intended to be a reassuring tone of voice. "And even corrupted gems can regenerate, can't they?"

"Well, yes, but…!" She hadn't had to regenerate since Steven healed her – what if retreating into her gem erased all the months of progress?!

"I'm sure it won't come to that," Steven cut in quickly. "You can do this, Centi! Even if you don't have your own weapon right now, we have lots of stuff for you to use! It's just a matter of figuring out what your strengths are!"

"But I don't have any strengths right now!" she blurted out.

Pearl tilted her head slightly. "Don't be ridiculous. Everyone has their own strengths. Now, let's commence, shall we?"

"DO YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT?" blared Holo-Pearl.

"I suppose so," sighed Centi. She adjusted her grip on the sabre and shifted into her best approximation of a sword-fighting stance.

Pearl pressed her lips together, and she seemed about to issue a correction, but her hologram lunged forward before she had a chance. Centi flinched when she saw her opponent's blade thrusting towards her and flailed with the sabre, just barely managing to dodge. Even as she stumbled aside, Holo-Pearl bounded forward with the grace of a dancer, leaving Centi to defend herself with a clumsy two-handed block.

"Concentrate!" shouted Pearl. "Find a proper stance!"

Concentrate? Yeah, right, fat chance of that happening. Centi was too busy trying to avoid the fast-paced sword strikes to even think about countering them. Her feet fumbled backwards, and when she dared to glance over her shoulder and see where she was headed, Holo-Pearl swept her legs out from under her. With a short cry, she slammed hard against the ground, and Holo-Pearl's sabre came plunging down at her…

…and just barely prodded her in the chest.

"CHALLENGER DEFEATED," boomed Holo-Pearl.

Slowly, Centi pushed herself up, her legs still tangled beneath her. Pearl and Steven were looking at her, none too reassured by her lack of skill.

At last, Pearl tented her fingers. "Well!" she proclaimed. "Maybe you're not a swordfighter, but we've got plenty more weapons to try where that came from!"

Centi didn't say anything as she pushed away Holo-Pearl's sabre and rose to her feet, but all she could think was, _Oh, good. Plenty more ways for me to lose._

…

Next up was a bow and arrow.

At first, it seemed to be going better than the previous "exploration." Steven and Pearl set up a series of makeshift targets, and when Centi drew the bowstring back, she didn't feel completely out of her element. Captain-class Nephrites were designed to have very specific enhanced vision skills, including the ability to estimate object trajectories (useful for both piloting a ship and steering it around obstacles) so her aim with the arrows wasn't completely inaccurate. She never _quite_ hit the exact center of the target, but she did come close on multiple occasions.

Pearl suddenly became a lot more optimistic about her progress. "Very nice!" she declared. "Now, let's see you put that bow to use in a battle!"

And of course, everything went rapidly downhill from there. The second that Holo-Pearl took the battlefield again, every shred of confidence that Centi had been cautiously building up was scattered into oblivion. She had to try to hit a moving target, _and_ block incoming attacks, _and_ dodge…and when she had to do so much at once, it was like her brain short-circuited, throwing out everything that it should have known about distance and velocity in favor of sheer self-preservation.

Ten long, painful minutes later, Holo-Pearl cornered her and knocked the bow out of her hands before pushing her onto a pile of arrows that had spilled from her quiver. "CHALLENGER DEFEATED!"

Pearl placed her fingers against her mouth, as if that would hide her disappointed frown. "Maybe…maybe the weapons are just distracting you. How are you at hand-to-hand combat, Centi?"

Very mediocre, as it turned out. Even when Pearl recalled her hologram's weapon, Centi still didn't win a single match against her artificial opponent, ending up pinned and kicked and backed into walls over and over again. The only thing that she could ever do to prolong a fight was simply to heel turn and run away, and even then, she was always caught in the end. The blackboard where her score was tallied remained completely vacant of Pearl Points.

Over on the sidelines, Pearl watched the proceedings with an expression of increasing dismay. She didn't need to say anything in order to communicate that she'd expected more from a soldier in the Gem War. "There must be _something_ we can do with you," she muttered furtively.

Steven tugged on Pearl's sash lightly. "Hey, Centi is pretty fast! Maybe we should do some kind of speed training!"

Pearl brightened. "You're right, she does have pretty good speed! So next up, we'll have a test of agility!"

The test turned out to involve Holo-Pearl stationed at one end of the ruins while Centi started moving forward from the opposite side. Holo-Pearl wouldn't move, but it _would_ fire off a series of laser bursts from the tip of its spear, which Centi had to avoid as she ran ahead. If she could reach and tag Holo-Pearl without being struck, she'd win her first Pearl Point of the day.

In theory, this sounded simpler than the previous challenges. She didn't have to keep track of where her enemy was or counterattack in any way, she just had to run forward and dodge. Yet even as she began the test, weaving to and fro around long-range laser blasts, she found that she was having trouble handling it. The bright lights dazzled her eye; the crackling and whooshing sounds battered at her ears. She kept her head down when she should have been watching for projectiles, and a few barely rushed passed her, leaving trails of cool sparks at the edges of her hair and jumpsuit (thankfully, these were only safety lasers, incapable of hurting her – but she scarcely could have felt more intimidated if she'd been in the midst of a real battle).

Things ended decidedly not in her favor when one of her legs decided to pick a fantastically bad time to revert, transforming into a slender stick of chitin and awkward joints that didn't work well with the rest of her body. She tripped almost immediately and went sprawling facedown on the ground. Laser blasts ruffled her hair as they skimmed over the top of her head.

"Time out!" called Pearl, dashing forward to shut down her hologram.

Centi sighed, resting her chin on the smooth-worn stone below her. She wasn't hurt, and she probably could have figured out how to walk on her reverted leg with a bit of trial and error, but she simply didn't see the point in getting up. Even without any kind of physical hindrance, she would have done poorly, just like she had all day. And what made it worse was the knowledge that Steven, who'd had such high hopes for her, had been right there watching her fail.

Moments later, he approached her, though all she could see of him from her current vantage point was his sandals. "Are you okay, Centi?" he asked worriedly.

"I am fine." She sighed again, folding her arms beneath her.

"Are you sure? Can you stand, or…?"

"Probably. But…not right now." She rolled over onto her back, which was a little more comfortable, and yielded a slightly better view. "Sometimes I like to lay on the ground. It helps me feel more relaxed."

"Can I join you, then?"

She gestured noncommittally, and he spread out beside her, following her gaze as she watched the pale sky.

"So you had some trouble with training," he spoke up hesitantly after a pause.

"That's an understatement," Centi grumbled.

"If you don't mind me asking, what was going on? Do you think it's just because you're corrupted?"

"Yes…and no." Her pupil flitted down to her mismatched leg for a moment. Certainly her tendency towards sensory overload hadn't helped her at all today, but that wasn't the only reason why she hadn't proven to be a very good warrior so far… "I was never meant to be a fighter."

Steven propped himself up on his elbows, eyes widening. "You weren't? But you said you were a soldier in the Gem War!"

"I said I was a soldier. I never said I was any good at it." She brushed her hair away from her eye before turning to him. "Nephrites are designed to be pilots. We can fly ships, we're good with engines, we can navigate by the stars and have nice spacial coordination. When the Gem War started, Homeworld needed everyone on Earth to fight if they possibly could, so of course me and my crew joined up like good little Homeworld gems. But we mostly just used our ships, whenever we could, at least. Homeworld knew that we wouldn't do very well as foot soldiers."

"Don't you have a weapon, though?"

"It's just a grappling hook," Centi admitted. "Good for climbing around on the outside of ships. Sometimes I used it for self-defense, but calling it a weapon is going a little far."

Steven pursed his lips, and she could see him straining, struggling to come up with something that she could do. "But you must have other powers…"

"Yes. But I can't use them. They all get messed up, one way or another, by…" She waved vaguely at her reverted leg. "So…now you know just how useless I really am."

"Aww, don't say that!" He reached out and placed his hand on her arm. "Nobody is ever useless. So maybe you're not the best fighter ever, so what? There's lots of other things that you're good at!"

"Like what?" asked Centi doubtfully.

"You're a good artist," he replied. "And – "

"Being a good artist isn't going to win any wars. Or find any songs."

"If you really want to be a better fighter, you just have to practice, that's all! Most people aren't good at something the first time they ever try it!"

"I'm just not sure if it will make a difference." She folded her hands on her stomach despondently. "I've been corrupted for so long, I barely even remember how to actually _fight_. All I know how to do now is just survive."

"Surviving's not bad," he assured her. "It's a start, anyway."

Centi shrugged, not knowing how to explain that she was tired of living on survival instincts, of living her life like an animal…tired of her corruption leaving her with no other option.

Steven removed his hand from her arm. "So, just to clarify, you don't think that you'd work well with any kind of weapon?"

The corner of her mouth twitched. "Not unless you've got a spaceship for me to use."

Suddenly, Steven's head shot up, and she looked over at him in surprise. His eyes had become huge and shiny as he stared into her face.

"We _do_ ," he almost whispered in his enthrallment. "We _do_ have a spaceship!"

She sat up quickly, her bad leg scrabbling at the ground beneath her. "Wait, really?!"

"Yes!" He nodded ecstatically. "It's a Homeworld ship that we got from some Rubies! You remember when I told you about that?!"

"More or less," she responded. "But you never told me that – "

He wasn't listening anymore. "Peeeaaaarl!" he cried, scampering to his feet and nearly tripping in his haste to reach his guardian. "Pearl, Pearl, Peeeaaaarl!"

Centi kept her eye fixed on him, rubbing at her malformed leg while he revealed this new revelation to Pearl. None of his actual words carried, but the overjoyed tone in which they were spoken certainly did. Pearl listened to him thoughtfully for several long moments, before finally taking his hand and leading him back towards Centi.

"I'd nearly forgotten that you were a pilot, Centi," she admitted. "That's certainly going to come in handy if our search for this song takes us off of this planet."

Hope stirred in Centi's chest. She hadn't flown in much too long, yet she was certain that she hadn't completely forgotten the one thing that she was made to do – and if she _could_ still fly, then perhaps she wouldn't be entirely useless to the Crystal Gems after all.

"However!" added Pearl. "A spaceship isn't really the kind of weapon that you can bring onto a battlefield with you. I think that we ought to keep practicing with more traditional weapons, just in case something happens and you end up in a tight spot."

Well, there went her relief at not being made to embarrass herself anymore. "Okay," Centi conceded wearily.

"We'll help you get it right," Pearl promised. "I think we were on to something with that bow and arrow. And maybe I can design an easier Holo-Pearl training program for you, just to start off with, you understand…"

And as she began to describe the new combat regimen that she would create, more walking herself through it than actually addressing anyone else, Centi nodded along and didn't even attempt to follow the thread of the conversation. The Crystal Gems had a spaceship, which meant that there might be hope for her after all. But she suspected that as long as she was corrupted, trying to make her into a warrior would be a lost cause.

At last, Steven helped her hop to her mismatched feet, and Pearl headed over to the blackboard. Centi presumed that it was just to start putting it away, but instead, the taller gem placed a single sticker beside where she'd written Centi's name.

"Yay!" cheered Steven. "You got a Pearl Point after all!"

Centi blinked. "But…I didn't beat any of the challenges! I didn't even come close!"

"Maybe not," said Pearl, "but you did display one of the Three P's – perseverance. I can tell that you're not enjoying yourself, but not once have you given up. And that's something to be admired!"

Steven grinned and nodded, and Centi smiled thinly, internally certain that this was less of a Pearl Point and more of a Pity Point. Surely everyone knew that she wasn't really persevering, not in the slightest. It was just that after all this time, after being created as one of Homeworld's little pawns, she couldn't really do much more than follow the orders of her superiors and hope beyond hope that she didn't disappoint them.


	4. Away from Home

_A/N: Literally the day after I posted my last chapter, I learned about a possible Season 4 episode called "Monster Crew." I say possible because it was found on a questionably sourced episode list, and plenty of fake lists for Steven Universe have floated around the Internet before. If it is real, though, I will face canon and walk backwards into hell._

* * *

Ordinary gems didn't sleep. But Centi wasn't an ordinary gem.

As a centipeedle, she had slept regularly, lacking the stamina and internal recharge capabilities that set gems apart from Earth life-forms. Now, half-healed from her corruption, she had lower strength and endurance but probably could have gotten by with simply resting when she needed to – except she'd figured out that she _liked_ sleeping. Or rather, she liked the effect that it had on her. It was like pushing the reset button on her brain, and for someone who often got so overloaded, some dark and quiet time without thinking was frequently just what she needed.

Sleep certainly would have been welcome tonight, but instead she found herself sequestered inside her ship between Neph and Phrita, listening to their soft snuffly breathing, her eye remaining persistently open and staring at the arced ceiling above her. Her leg still hadn't recovered; still, why was that keeping her awake when she'd slept in far more uncomfortable forms many times before?

Maybe it wasn't anything physical after all, she admitted to herself. Her mind wouldn't stop grinding away at its jumble of cached thoughts, circling around and around to the current mission, her own uselessness, training tomorrow, disappointing the Crystal Gems…rinse and repeat in a slightly different order.

Neph and Phrita had obviously been excited when Centi told them what the mission was about. They wanted to join in, which quite frankly terrified her – she had been healed weeks and weeks ahead of them, and she'd still failed miserably in combat today. What would happen to two corrupted gems who were still so unstable…? Then again, perhaps she should have a little more faith in her crew. They couldn't possibly do any worse than she had.

She closed her eye, feeling a tickle of hair against her face; hers or Neph's or Phrita's, she couldn't really say. The atmosphere in the ship, mossy and green-smelling, usually served to relax her into sleep, but nothing was helping her calm down tonight.

Centi had slept before, but this was the first time that she had ever experienced insomnia.

…

She must have nodded off eventually, because the next thing she new, she was snapping awake to bright sunlight and her crew's visitor-alarm shrieks. Still only half awake, she scrambled to her feet and lurched her way out to the warp pad, hardly noticing that her leg had recovered overnight.

There was Steven, having returned to fetch her for training, currently bidding good morning to Neph and Phrita. They were looking pretty good today; they were even able to converse in a half-speech riddled with gurgles and clicks. Centi dragged a hand down her face to wake herself up as she hurried over to meet them.

"Good morning, Centi!" called Steven, waving to her, and Neph and Phrita mimicked him: "Morning, good morning!"

Centi came to a stop in front of the warp pad, hugging her own arms securely. "Yes. Good morning, Steven."

"Ready for some more training? Today is a new day!" His wave became a fist pump.

Right. A new day, and new opportunities…to make the same mistakes, more than likely. Centi attempted to smile, but she wasn't really very good at faking emotions.

Luckily, Phrita interjected before Steven could comment on any noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "What about us?!" she demanded excitedly.

He blinked. "Huh?"

"We also want – that is, we wish to…!" Phrita started to gesture in quick, broad strokes, her speech lapsing into insect chatters.

Steven watched the display for several moments before blinking in stupefaction. "Um, I'm really sorry, but I don't understand…"

"I told them about the mission to cure corrupted gems," confessed Centi. "And now they want to help. It was all they talked about last night."

"Oh…" He offered Neph and Phrita a sympathetic smile. "Sorry, guys. I wish I could let you help, but I just can't."

"Why not?" whine Phrita.

"Are we – undesirable?" pressed Neph anxiously. "Would we ruin the mission?"

"What?! No, no, no!" Steven shook his head emphatically. "Don't start feeling bad about this! It's not your fault, it's just that…well…uh…"

Seeing him scramble for a rational explanation that wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings, Centi supplied, "Because Garnet said so."

Neph and Phrita exchanged a doubtful, one-eyed glance, and Neph gurgled questioningly.

"Garnet," repeated Centi. "You know, the leader of the Crystal Gems? She is our superior now. And for strategic reasons, she wants you to stay here for the time being." She shrugged as if Garnet's motives were a completely mystery to her, which was at least half true. "Steven and I don't have the authority to change that."

Phrita blinked. "Oh!" she said. "I comprehend it now!"

"But you will return soon, yes?" asked Neph, capping off her query with a few soft clicks.

"Of course," Centi assured them. "I'll always come back."

The three of them smiled to each other and touched hands, a gesture of affection that they often performed when comforting one another or saying goodnight. Then, without further interference, Centi's crew let her go on her way with nothing more than a wave goodbye. She waved back as she and Steven returned to the Warp Pad.

"What was that all about?" he asked as they tromped through the vines underfoot. "I mean, they were all worried that we didn't like them, but then they were okay with staying behind as soon as you mentioned Garnet."

She shrugged, her fingers running across her shoulder absently. "They do want to help," she answered. "But even corrupted gems know better than to disobey an order from their superiors."

…

No sooner had Centi stepped into the Crystal Gems' temple than she was beset by Peridot, the small lime-green gem who had been so disgusted by the corrupted gem yesterday. Needless to say, she was not a welcome sight first thing in the morning on what was sure to be a difficult day, yet here she was, prancing up to Centi with both hands behind her back.

"Good morning, Centi!" she sang out.

Centi's shoulders hunched together. "Hi," she said in a dull tone. She glanced over at Steven doubtfully, and to her surprise found that his expression was rather expectant, like he'd been waiting for this to happen.

Peridot cleared her throat. "First things first, I wanted to apologize for my behavior yesterday. I know we got off on the wrong foot."

Centi blinked. An actual apology? How was she supposed to react to that…? "Um…"

"To make it up to you," continued Peridot, as if Centi hadn't made a sound, "I decided to get you this gift!" With that, she thrust a wrapped, rectangular package out from behind her back, smiling with eagerness and self-satisfaction.

Centi plucked the package from Peridot's hands hesitantly. "A…a gift? For me?"

"Yes!" Peridot nodded. "And, by the way, the proper response when you receive a present is to say 'Wow, thanks.' It's a human custom that Steven taught me."

Well, that made enough sense. "Wow, thanks," recited Centi, before carefully undoing the ribbon around that Peridot had twined around the gift.

When the paper fell away, Centi found herself holding a small black-bound Earth object that she recognized as a "book." Steven had showed her a few, and while some of them contained beautiful illustrations, almost all of them also had words. As she was trying to think of a way to tactfully explain to Peridot that she couldn't read human-speak, she opened the cover of the book, only to reveal that the first page was completely blank. And so, it turned out, was every other page after that.

"It's called a sketchbook!" proclaimed Peridot. "Steven informed me that you enjoy drawing, so I got you a portable receptacle of paper! This way, you can draw whenever you want to!"

Centi's eye widened. "Wait, really?!" The paper in the book was as creamy and supple as her poster board – she was really allowed to draw in it?!

"Yeah! Oh, and you didn't see the best part!" Peridot gently prodded the side of the sketchbook with her fingertip. For the first time, Centi noticed a small elastic loop holding a pencil, which had been topped by a comical eraser cap shaped like a friendly one-eyed monster.

Centi laughed, running her finger along the eraser. "This is so…nice!"

Peridot looked pleased. "Do you really think so?"

"Yes!" It was a legitimately thoughtful gift; maybe Peridot wasn't so bad after all.

"You are welcome!" Peridot glanced over her shoulder for a second, then turned back to Centi and added, "You are interested in art, and I am also interested in a specific kind of art known as 'meep morp.' Maybe sometime, you could come to my home away from Homeworld and see the meep morps that Lapis and I have made!"

This grabbed Centi's attention immediately. There were other gems interested in art – and _Peridot_ , of all people, was one of them…? "That sounds…very enjoyable!" she responded genuinely. "And maybe another time, you could come to my ship and see my artwork, as well! I could even draw you!"

Peridot's eyes lit up. "Yes! I'm sure that I would make an excellent model!"

Steven grinned over at both of them. "Yay, you guys are getting along! You see, Centi? I told you that nobody thought you were a freak!"

"Nope!" agreed Peridot. "Just a bit of a clod."

Centi stiffened.

Peridot snickered delightedly: _nyeheheheheheh_. "You see, that was a joke, because I don't think you're a clod at all! It's the Earth humor device known as 'sarcasm'!"

"Oh." Centi quieted for a moment, the wheels in her head turning. Then: "In that case, you're the meanest, nastiest gem I've ever met!"

Peridot snickered again, and this time, she was joined by both Centi and Steven. For the first time since joining the song-finding mission, Centi almost felt like she belonged here.

"Okay!" Steven finally interrupted. "Guess we better get back to our training, then!"

And just like that, the feeling was gone.

"Do we _have_ to?" sighed Centi.

"Well, if you want to get any better at fighting, then yes!" Steven skipped a few steps around the Warp Pad. "Practice makes perfect!"

"Well said, Steven!" praised a new voice, and Pearl loped towards them on her long legs, an oddly bulging sack cradled in her arms. "I've got a full load of new weapons for us to try today. We'd better get started as quickly as – "

At that very second, Garnet burst through the front door of the house with such force that she nearly wrenched it from its hinges.

"Gems!" she barked, assuming a battle stance even as she stood there in the doorway. "We've had a monster sighting on the beach! This requires our immediate attention!"

The house dissolved into a flutter of purposeful movements. Pearl dropped sack of weapons on the floor, ignoring the loud clatter it made as she drew her spear and hurried outside; Amethyst whooped out an enthusiastic war cry and flailed her whip around as she followed; even Steven and Peridot seemed to know what to do, with Steven's round face suddenly overcast by solemnity, and Peridot muttering "This time I'm not gonna let that stupid monster get the better of me!" as they left. Centi had frozen where she was standing, her fingers squeezed around her new sketchbook, unable to believe that they'd been talking and laughing just a few minutes ago. But when Garnet refused to close the door and instead inclined her head towards Centi purposefully, the corrupted gem realized that she was expected to join in this battle as well, despite the fact that she had proven her complete incompetence less than a day ago.

But she went anyway, of course. What she'd said to Neph and Phrita was true – Garnet was in charge here, and Centi had been thoroughly conditioned to never disobey an order from her superior.

Outside lay a world of confusing stimuli; it was sunny but very windy, challenging Centi's previously formed "storm or clear weather" perceptions of the Earth's weather patterns. As the other gems bounded into battle, she remained on the front porch, huddled as close as she dared to the balustrade. She only had vague memories of the sea as water that breathed of its own accord, and silty ground that left her insect legs constantly scrabbling for purchase. Right now, it looked even more intimidating, thanks to the addition of a monster.

The creature had four legs supporting a muscle-swollen body, feet that ended in hooves instead of toes, and long sinewy seaweed sprouting from its neck and tail. Its skin was rough and corrugated, like scales that had been melted down, then cracked into new patterns. And then there was its strangely mismatched head, long and tubular with beady black eyes embedded on either side.

"Woah!" cried Steven, from someplace that Centi couldn't see from her current vantage point. "It's a seahorse!"

Centi's eye moved up and down with almost mechanical precision, absorbing every detail of the monster. Finally, she spotted what she'd been looking for: a slender blue gem at the seahorse's throat.

The monster was a corrupted gem. Just like her.

Amethyst was the first to attack, snapping her whip towards the seahorse. It reared up and emitted a gurgling whinny, which was abruptly cut off when its mouth began to bubble with liquid, and it sprayed a powerful jet of water at her that sent her flying back.

"Ewww!" she cried, shaking herself to get some of the clinging water droplets off of her body. "I'm all covered in monster spit!"

Garnet had reached the bottom of the stairs now, her gauntlets at the ready. "It must have come from the ocean. It has some kind of water-control powers!"

"Aww, man! If only Lapis were here today!" groaned Steven.

Centi watched, mortified, her sketchbook clasped against her chest. _This monster was a gem just like her_. Who had the seahorse been before she was corrupted? A Crystal Gem? A Homeworld soldier who was deemed disposable enough to leave behind? Either way, she'd had a life and friends and powers and hopes for the future, and now she was here, driven by the cracks in her mind itself to defend what little she still had. And the Crystal Gems were going to fight her and hurt her and poof her. Centi knew that it was technically what had to be done, but it seemed so _wrong_. And how could everyone else be so casual about it?!

Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Steven all ganged up on the angry, frightened seahorse. (Peridot hung towards the back and appeared to be trying to _look_ like she was doing something, when really, she wasn't.) So much was happening in such a short span of time that Centi's easily-addled brain had a hard time keeping up with it all; she saw spears flying and whips cracking, and occasionally heard a shrieking whinny that hinted at one of Garnet's power-punches landing on the monster. Then it would spew pressurized jets of water at them, or charge at them with its muscles and pounding hooves, and a pink flash would indicate that Steven had thrown up his shield or a bubble.

Mostly, Centi watched the seahorse itself. It was sad, really, to see how it cowered and attempted to defend itself. It was outnumbered and outmatched, and some part of it probably knew that, yet there was nothing it was capable of other than to continue hopelessly fighting. She knew the feeling well.

Finally, a well-timed dual attack with Pearl's spear and Amethyst's whip rendered the seahorse unable to take anymore. Its physical form dissipated – but the force of the blow was such that its gem was set flying through the air, glittering in the sun.

All five Crystal Gems on the beach ran after it, and Peridot managed to get in the lead. "I got it, I got it!" she yelled, stretching her hands as far above her head as they would go.

Centi watched her progress – and she opened her mouth to cry out a warning, a split second too late. No one would have been able to hear her, anyway.

Peridot rammed into somebody else on the beach: another gem, dark red and squarish. The gem scowled and stumbled back as Peridot went tumbling down onto the sand. Meanwhile, the seahorse's stone landed in the hands of a near-identical square gem who was standing just behind their apparent compatriot.

Centi leaned over the railing, and the only thing stopping her from rushing down there herself was the knowledge that all she'd do was get in the way. Still, even from this distance, she could tell that something was very wrong, and she wasn't the only one who thought so. Garnet suddenly spread out her arms to prevent anyone else from approaching the mysterious red duo.

They all stood their tensely for what must have been at least five minutes. Centi could see their mouths moving, but from this distance, she couldn't hear their conversation at all. Then the two red gems turned around and ran back up the beach, one of them still cupping the remnants of the seahorse in her hands. Garnet still refused to let anyone follow them, although Amethyst looked almost ready to leap over her leader's arm and give chase anyway.

The red gems kept running until they would have been nothing but a couple of specks to anyone with normal eyesight. Centi wasn't sure if any of the others could see what happened next – but she did. Nephrites had exceedingly good long-distance vision.

There was somebody else on the beach. A tall figure, not unlike the color of sunlight, who was pale orange or pink or maybe…possibly…yellow? Even Centi couldn't see for sure. If only she had a way to capture an image…!

…wait a minute, she did! Not the most accurate image in the world, but it would be better than nothing.

She flipped open her sketchbook, snatched up the pencil, and began to scribble while barely looking at the page…putting to paper her impressions of the unnerving event that only she could see…


	5. Something Seen

Garnet herded the other Crystal Gems into the house, not responding to Pearl and Amethyst's insistence that they should go after the intruders. Centi was so wrapped up in her drawing that she almost didn't notice until the protesting crowd reached the porch. Then she scurried inside with all the rest of them, her open sketchbook smooshed flat against her chest, her fingers squeezed rigidly around the pencil with its comical monster head.

"What are we running away for?!" complained Amethyst. "A couple of Rubies are no match for us!"

"And if we let them get away, we might never get another chance to figure out what they're up to!" added Pearl.

"No," said Garnet. Her lips were pressed very close together, barely parting to allow a word to pass between them. "I can see that nothing good will come of it."

The door slammed shut behind Centi, and she ventured another peek into her sketchbook. _She_ understood the panorama into which she'd arranged the haphazardly scrawled figures…but would anyone else? She began to scratch in a few adjustments. Luckily, none of the other Crystal Gems had taken notice of her just yet.

"They kidnapped a corrupted gem!" cried Steven. "Who knows what they're gonna do to it?! We have to go back for it…!"

"No," repeated Garnet, fixing him with a glare from behind her visor. "You don't know what's at stake."

Centi peered up from behind her sketchbook. "Um, what happened back there, exactly?" she asked timidly.

"Didn't you _see_?!" exclaimed Amethyst.

"I saw, I saw! I just couldn't hear. What was it…?"

Pearl huffed out a sigh and crossed her arms in a way that made her elbows and shoulders jab at the air. "We had just poofed the monster when we were ambushed by two Rubies," she explained.

"Rubies?" repeated Centi, her head tilting slightly. "You mean, foot soldier Rubies?"

"The very same," Pearl replied with a sharp nod. "One of them caught the corrupted gem, and we went up to them to tell them to hand it over. Then they said – "

"Hold on a moment," interrupted Garnet.

Everyone's eyes snapped towards her like she'd screamed instead of making a quiet statement.

Garnet reached down until her fingertip almost touched the cover of Centi's sketchbook. "What's this drawing?" she asked.

Instantly, Centi felt a hot tingle of self-consciousness. "This? Um, well, like I said before, I could see what was going on, so I just…" She averted her eye and held the sketchbook in Garnet's general direction.

For almost a minute, Garnet examined the drawing closely, holding out of the view of everyone else. Then she took a few steps further into the house and spread the book out on the living room coffee table. "Centi, could you please explain to everyone what is going on in this image?" she said, not sounding judgmental, just curious.

Maybe Centi should have made a few more adjustments if Garnet couldn't tell what it was…but she obeyed nonetheless, her hands wringing together as she stepped forward. "Um, well, these are the two Rubies…all I could see was that they were small and square, I couldn't see what gems they were. And this one has the corrupted gem inside a bubble…" She pointed to where she had drawn a small figure holding up an orb with both hands. "And this one is going like – " Withdrawing her hand, she twisted both arms into the Diamond salute, a motion that was still as natural to her as walking. "I didn't have a good way to draw that when they're not stick figures. But, um, she's saluting this other gem here…"

She didn't need to point this time: everyone was already staring at the third, much taller figure that Centi had depicted in her drawing. Peridot leaned over Garnet's hip to get a closer look. "Who's _that_?" she demanded. "I didn't see anybody else on the beach…!"

"Neither did I!" exclaimed Amethyst.

"Well, she was very far away," admitted Centi. "But I can see things that are far away. So…" Words failing her, she flapped her hand over the picture demonstratively.

What she had vaguely sketched in next to the two Rubies was a tall, angular gem; the majority of her features had been left blank, as even Centi's distance vision hadn't been able to pick them out. What she _had_ seen, though, was the tall figure placing her hand on the bubbled gem to whisk it away, and Centi had depicted the event as best she could.

"She pushed down on the bubble. And then, whoosh!" She spread out her hands. "It was gone. I guess this other gem must have been the leader, because the Rubies were saluting to her."

"Yes," agreed Garnet. She turned back to the rest of the Crystal Gems with her hands balanced on her hips. "And this is why we didn't go after the Rubies. Because we have more than just the Rubies to worry about, and we can't go making a target of ourselves."

Steven placed his hand against her leg, which was about as high as he could reach. "Did you see this happening with your future vision?" he asked softly.

"I saw that it was a possibility," she responded. "A possibility that Centi has just confirmed."

"This certainly matches up with what we heard," remarked Pearl.

Centi frowned down at her sketchbook, still trying to process how one scribbly drawing had produced so much discussion, so much emotion. Pearl's comment, though, brought her attention back to how much she didn't know. "What _did_ you hear? You still haven't told me…"

Steven took initiative this time, scooting out from behind Garnet. "When we caught up to the Rubies and told them to give the corrupted gem back, they said no, of course. Then one of them said something about us – running experiments on other gems, and 'harvesting' them…"

"Their exact words were, and I quote, 'Now we know for sure that you rebels have been harvesting innocent gems for your experiments!'" This came from Peridot, who even spoke in what was probably meant to be a mimicry of the soldier gem's voice. "To be honest, I had always heard that, too, about the rebels harvesting us. Because I didn't realize what corruption was or that Homeworld had caused it."

"And then," Amethyst interjected, "I was like, 'We're gonna kick your red butts if you don't give that back to us!' and they were like 'Just try it! After those other Rubies disappeared on Earth, we're prepared for anything!' Then G wanted to know what they were doing on Earth in the first place, and…"

"They said 'We're here to help one of our own'," finished Steven. "And…then they ran off."

Centi glanced around uncertainly at the grim faces surrounding her. "So…what do you think that means?" she finally ventured.

Pearl rested her chin on her hand. "Both other times that the Rubies came to Earth, they were searching for Jasper. She would certainly count as 'one of their own.' Oh, I'm sorry, Centi; how much do you know about what happened after Steven healed you?"

"I know most of it," Centi assured her. "Steven told me whenever he came to visit. He said that there were these Rubies, but the first time you made them leave by playing baseball, whatever that is, and then they came back again but Amethyst pretended to be Jasper and you all went to the moon and the Rubies got lost in space." She paused. "Um, it sounds really confusing when I say it, but I understood it better when Steven told me. So, those were the same Rubies that were here before?"

"No," answered Garnet stiffly. "They were different ones. There are a lot of Rubies, and I don't think that Homeworld would bother to search for a few who had gone missing."

Centi didn't say anything to that. She was no Ruby, but she certainly knew how it felt to be abandoned by Homeworld…

"You say that, but I think that Homeworld might be suspicious of what happened nonetheless," Pearl pointed out. "As far as they know, five Rubies, one of their strongest quartz soldiers, and a Lapis Lazuli have all disappeared without a trace. And they made those comments about us 'harvesting' and 'experimenting'! Doesn't it seem to you like they think that we might have done something with the Rubies and with Jasper?"

Peridot nodded eagerly. "Jasper is one of the most valuable soldiers on Homeworld! Even if Rubies are disposable – sorry, I mean, even if they _think_ that Rubies are disposable – they would never just leave her here. Why else do you think they sent out a search party just devoted to rescuing her? They must believe that us rebels are preparing to harvest her and assimilate her power!"

"Nobody's going to be assimilating power from Jasper anytime soon," said Pearl dismissively.

Privately, Centi couldn't help wondering what would happen if they just turned over Jasper's gem and were done with it. Steven had said that he, Amethyst, and Peridot had poofed and bubbled her, and she clearly hadn't wanted to be on Earth in the first place, so what was the harm in sending her back home? But at the same time, Centi knew that handing Jasper over would be a temporary solution that would cause a whole slew of problems later, like sticking a piece of tape over a ship's gas pipe and waiting for the slow leak to blow you up. Jasper had already proven to be a powerful force that could help eliminate the Crystal Gems for could. And aside from that, Homeworld was _bad_ , and nobody deserved to be stuck in their hierarchy. It was easy to imagine Steven hoping that Jasper would pull a one-eighty the way that Peridot had.

"We don't even know for sure that it's Jasper they're looking for," Garnet reminded everyone. "Let's not jump to conclusions so soon. At any rate, I'm glad that Centi was able to confirm that the Rubies aren't alone this time."

Centi raised her eye. Had she actually done something _useful_?

"And," added Garnet, her gaze swaying between the Crystal Gems, "any leader from Homeworld won't be fooled by cheap trickery. Which means that every move we make must be exceptionally careful."

Pearl nodded. "No disguises, no shapeshifting, and no baseball."

"Hey, that was an accident!" protested Steven.

"Peridot," said Garnet, "I want you to come with me to see if we can gather more information about who has come to Earth this time. Your technical knowledge makes you our best hope for hacking into Diamond control systems."

Peridot pounded her fist into her hand. "You're right, it does!"

"Everyone else, carry on with your training," continued Garnet. "Our quest will become even more difficult if Homeworld is truly about to get involved. We all need to be prepared."

"Hey, are you saying that I need to go back to training?!" griped Amethyst.

"Everyone needs practice," Garnet told her. "But I was thinking that you could help Pearl work with Centi. I believe they had a bit of trouble yesterday."

Amethyst brightened immediately. "Ohhh! Yeah, I can totally do that! C'mon, my corrupted homegirl, let's get you ready to kick some butt!"

Centi stifled a groan. With all the excitement resulting from the scuffle on the beach, she'd been hoping that she might be able to wriggle out of training for today; her mind was so consumed with recent events that she knew that her chances of actually concentrating would be slim to none. And now Amethyst would get to see her fail as well! The one gem who'd actually encouraged her yesterday, finally realizing that her 'corrupted homegirl' was a total failure…

The fact that her drawing had helped was definitely a fluke, she decided as Pearl ushered her towards the Warp Pad. She didn't expect that something like that would happen again anytime soon.

…

The training session was long, exhausting, and frustrating.

If there was one good thing about it, it was that Centi didn't have to fight Holo-Pearl with its nerve-grating voice, instead sparring with Amethyst and Steven. However, her lack of skill compared to them dampened her spirits pretty rapidly. She tried just about every weapon in Pearl's bag of tricks – a dagger, a nunchuk, a hammer, an axe, plus some that she didn't even know the name of – and seemed to get worse with every new attempt. Even her opponents going easy on her didn't help. Her combat skills were beyond salvaging.

As she got wrapped by Amethyst's whip for the two dozenth time, finding herself overpowered and flicked to the ground the way any human would flick a bug off of their arm, she felt a new sensation bubble in her chest…something she didn't often get a chance to feel. This time, she wasn't just _frustrated_ by her lack of progress: she was full-on _angry_.

A growl rose up in her throat, and Centi tore herself free from the clutches of the whip, scrambling to her feet. "This is hopeless!" she shouted, her voice cracking and splintering from sheer rage.

The words rang out across the ruins, much louder than she'd thought they would be, and everyone froze and stared at her.

Amethyst lifted her hands, letting the whip dissolve into a flash of light. "Woah, hey!" she said soothingly, striding a little closer to Centi. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No!" Centi bunched her hands in her hair, her mind hurtling dizzyingly under the strain of her emotions, pushing the words out. "I…I hurt me! I'm…hurting myself! Because I can't do _anything_ right…!"

In the distance, Pearl reached out a hand briefly, but evidently decided that any attempts at comfort would only make things worse. Steven, with no such reservations, came forward, and Amethyst frowned sympathetically. "Hey, are you crying…?"

Sure enough, Centi felt thick tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping from the tip of her nose. She turned away with a wordless infuriated sound. "I-I'm crying because I'm _mad_!" she spluttered out. "Because I'm the _worst_!"

She yanked at her hair some more. It was hard to tell over the roaring pulse of her own distress, but she could have sworn that she heard Amethyst murmur, "The worst, huh…?"

Then Steven came up behind her and insinuated his hand with hers.

"I'm sorry, Centi," he said, leaning against her briefly. "I know you're really upset right now. But don't give up, okay? You beat corruption, I know you can beat this too…!"

Her hand spasmed in his. "I can't beat _anything_!" she cried. "I never _beat_ corruption! I'm only a little bit better because of something that you did, not because of me! I'll never be able to do anything like that on my own!"

Another spasm, this one running all the way down her torso. Centi jerked away as she felt her form quaver, and in the next moment, two malformed arms sprouted from her side – almost humanoid in appearance, but too shrunken and twisted and angular to be of any real use.

This reminder of her failure to even exist properly was the last straw. She took off running, her head bowed, leaving the ruins behind her dotted with free-falling tears. She got as far as the Warp Pad before realizing that she could go no further, that gem technology would always acknowledge the ugly truth about her, even when everybody kept pretending that she was completely okay.

She plopped down on the Warp Pad and hugged herself, ugly tears oozing from her eye and ugly extra arms dangling uselessly by her side, wishing that she could just be home.


	6. Beach City Getaway

_A/N: So sorry about the hiatus, everyone! It actually had nothing to do with writer's block or anything like that - I just moved, so things got a little hectic for a week or so. On top of that, this is a pretty long chapter, about twice as long as average. But here it finally is, and I'll do my very best to get back on a regular schedule after this!_

 _By the way, I should have mentioned this before, but you should check out my tumblr at [turbomun dot tumblr dot com / tagged / song-seekers] if you haven't already. That's where I'll post if I think I'm going to be late with an update, and I also post cool little things there like illustrations for each chapter! Take a look if you want!_

* * *

"…and I couldn't even land a single hit. It was horrible. _I'm_ horrible."

Centi's hands lay limply in her lap as she finished the story of her day, her eye fixed dejectedly on a vague point in the distance. Neph, who was crouched behind her and running a brush through her hair, gave a wordless soothing gurgle of reassurance. Nearby, a kneeling Phrita chattered out a question.

"No, I didn't try drawing my weapon. You saw what happened last time! And even trying to fight without it made me revert." By now, Centi's useless extra arms had dissipated, but knowing that they (or any other number of deformities) could reappear at any time felt like living under some sort of curse.

Phrita clicked pointedly, crawling forward; everything from her neck to her waist was more or less normal, but her lower body was a mass of writhing legs, both normal and insectile.

"Sure, it's been a month." Centi sighed roughly. "Four weeks, four days, and six hours. So what? It took me half an Earth year just to get like this, and I'm still completely useless!" She flopped backwards, causing Neph to abandon her grooming endeavor and scurry away. "I don't know why the Crystal Gems are even bothering with me."

Phrita started to reply, but was interrupted by her body starting to glow and waver. She waited patiently for it to pass, and when it did, her head was left completely normal: a single eye gem, identical to Centi's, gleamed confidently even in the meager starlight, and her tuft of white hair shifted ever so slightly in the breeze that passed between the tree trunks.

"Captain, you must not be so critical of yourself!" she announced. "You have faced many trials and have come back to us regardless! You are our captain!"

Neph began to chant as best she could with her scrambled vocal chords, and Phrita soon joined in: "Cap-tain! Cap-tain! Cap-tain!"

The volume and rhythm grated on Centi's already sensitive nerves, and she winced, clamping her hands over her ears. The other two stopped immediately, immediately overwhelmed with guilt at their failed attempt to cheer her up. So she spoke up quickly, "Thank you for believing in me. But I am not in the mood for…for loudness. Besides, what am I even the captain of anymore? I have no ship…"

"Your ship is there!" Phrita pointed emphatically to the ruin that had become their home. "Not quite airworthy, but still operational after so many years! And you are still the captain of us! We are still your crew!"

Neph nodded and screeched in agreement.

Centi couldn't help but smile the slightest bit. "I am very glad to be your captain," she admitted. "I am glad to have such a kind crew."

Phrita smiled back, and both of her friends sidled up to her, nestling close as they all watched the stars. With their vision, the distant galaxies and solar systems were endlessly fascinating, even with the tree branches blocking some of the view.

Every gem type had its quirks, and the most notable thing about Nephrites was that almost all of them had their gem in the same location: their eye. But unlike normal eye-gems, these were specially designed to give them superior sight, with features like built-in distance and trajectory calculation and intuitive navigation abilities. Nephrites had always been a nomadic class, whether they were the pioneers who set off into space to find new planets to colonize, or (like Centi and her crew) were simply created after such planets had been found to transport supplies and builder gems to the new settlements. They were known for being adaptable, and quick thinkers, especially those who were designated to take charge of the ships.

Centi missed those qualities in herself, and while she didn't exactly yearn for the days when she'd had them, she wished that those desirable traits would simply reappear now so that she could use them in her new and happier life. All she had now was her vision – both a curse and a blessing, as it sometimes contributed to her sensory overload, but other times allowed her to create beautiful drawings. Even with everything she was seeing these days, it just didn't feel like enough. She wished she could see everything that was going on around her, and maybe even further, so that she'd know what was coming for once.

…

The next day started much the same as the previous days had been: Steven came to fetch her via Warp Pad, and she followed him back to the temple silently. But once there, things took a bit of a left-hand turn. There was no sign of Peridot or Lapis, and Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl were all gathered in the kitchen expectantly, clearly awaiting Centi's arrival.

Centi stopped in her tracks and gazed at them, bewildered, and they simply stared back at her for a moment. Were they expecting her to speak first…? But how could she when she didn't even know what they were doing?

Finally, Pearl steepled her fingers and asked, "How are you doing today, Centi?"

"Fine," answered Centi stiffly, trying to gage where they were going with this.

Pearl cleared her throat and opened her mouth as if to say something more, but she was interrupted by Garnet stepping forward and peering downwards from behind her visor. "I understand that you had a bit of trouble in training yesterday," she stated.

Oh. _Oh_. So _that_ was what this was about… "Sorry," muttered Centi, eyeballing the floor as a hot flush invaded her tense muscles. "I'll…I'll do better next time."

Garnet inclined her head slightly. "Centi, you aren't in trouble. In fact, we wanted to apologize."

Centi was so startled that she lifted her eye without even thinking. "Apologize for what? I'm the one who – !"

"We haven't been entirely respectful of your differences," interjected Garnet. "You have limitations that we aren't used to, and we should have been more considerate."

Centi flinched as if she'd been reprimanded. "You were trying to help me. You were trying to make sure that I would succeed. If I can't survive in a battle, I'll just – "

"Shh," said Garnet, holding a finger to her lips.

Centi gulped down the rant that had been building up in her throat.

"As I said, you have unique limitations, but also unique talents," Garnet continued. "We got a glimpse of both yesterday. We need time to figure out how to best accommodate you, and you need a break. So your assignment today is to have some fun. Steven will help you."

Right on cue, Steven tugged on the sleeve of Centi's spacesuit, regarding her with huge, hopeful eyes. "Let's go to Beach City!" he proclaimed. "I haven't had the chance to show you around, but now's a perfect day for it! And there's tons of ways to have fun there!"

"I wanna come," declared Amethyst. "I'm the Crystal Gems' resident expert on fun!"

Garnet made a thumbs-up to silently approve this course of action.

Centi was still perplexed as she looked around at the four Crystal Gems. To her way of thinking, they shouldn't _have_ to 'accommodate' her – she should be able to behave like a regular gem. But to be honest, a break sounded optimal right about now. The thought of going back to training after yesterday's disastrous session made her chest fill up with ice.

"Okay," she finally conceded. "Show me the fun part of Beach City."

Amethyst reached over and slapped her on the back, not hard enough to hurt, but not soft enough to prevent her from stumbling. "Atta girl! You need to loosen up with me and Ste-cup! Trust me, by the time today is over, you won't remember any of the bad stuff from yesterday – I guarantee it!"

…

They went to the beach first.

After the monster attack yesterday, Centi couldn't help being a little apprehensive. Fortunately it was a beautiful day: no clouds, no strong wind, and no corrupted gems. She ventured closer to the water than she ever had before.

"It's so strange how the water breathes," she murmured, both feet firmly planted in the sand where her toes would be just out of the ocean's reach. "I have never understood it."

Steven thrust his hand into the air. "Oh, oh, I know this one! Pearl taught me that gravity from the moon makes the waves move. Sometimes they're higher and sometimes they're lower, and those are called tides!"

"Huh." She tilted her head. "So it's all a part of Earth's natural systems?"

"Yep! One hundred percent natural. Cool to look at, but even cooler to swim in!" With that, he took off into the waves, kicking up saltwater sprays and dampening his jeans up to the knees. "Come on, Centi!"

Her hands met each other in front of her chest and twisted awkwardly. "Uh…I don't know how to swim. It wasn't a required skill for pilots…"

Amethyst sloshed her way into the water, turning to face Centi with her hands on her hips. "Chill out, dude. You don't have to if you don't want to, but no one says you have to go far enough that swimming is required. Stay close to shore and you can keep your feet on the bottom the whole time."

"Well…" Tentatively, Centi extended her foot so that the sole of her suit touched the water. It didn't immediately eat away at her clothes or skin; it was neither boiling hot nor freezing cold. The feeling of liquid nudging at her like it was a living thing was rather unusual, but not entirely unpleasant.

So she took a few splattery steps forward, until the water line rose to her mid-calves, and nothing bad happened at all.

"Pretty awesome, right?!" called Steven.

She smiled sheepishly, not knowing how to respond.

Amethyst regarded her with a mischievous expression. "That's pretty good. Now how about you go a little further?"

That sounded fine to Centi, but out of nowhere, she had a sudden urge to be a little more playful instead of just complying with whatever she was told. She stuck her nose in the air and retorted, "What if I don't _want_ to?"

For a split second, Amethyst's eyes widened – then she grinned. "What if I _make_ you?"

"You can't make me do anything!" teased Centi. "I'm way taller than you!"

"Not for long!" bellowed Amethyst, and even as she spoke, her body was morphing into that of a heavily muscled fighter, a shape that easily doubled her height. She lunged towards Centi, snatched the corrupted gem around the waist, and hoisted her a foot or so into the air.

Centi squealed, banging her heels against Amethyst's artificially broad chest. "Hey! What do you think you're doing?!"

"You're gonna play in the water, and you're gonna like it!" roared Amethyst, and with that she tossed Centi lightly towards the ocean.

The water wasn't deep where Centi landed, a few yards away, but the resulting splash was enough to drench her near-completely. She sat there, her butt in the wet sand, her knees poking up awkwardly out of the sea, her soaked hair hanging down on either side of her face like a set of curtains…and she burst into laughter. It was the first time she'd laughed in days, and it felt so refreshing that it was nearly a minute before she was able to stop. Steven and Amethyst laughed along with her, out of joy and out of relief.

Amethyst's fighter-body flashed and flowed into her normal one, and she flexed her arms triumphantly. "And the winner is…me!"

Centi did something that Steven had taught her to do not so long ago: she jabbed her tongue out of her mouth and blew a 'raspberry,' as it was called. Amethyst gasped in mock offense, and as retribution, she kicked up a new splash of water towards Centi. Centi retaliated with a splash of her own, and then Steven joined in, and then all three of them were running through the waves trying to get each other wet, playing a game that had no rules and no winners, and something incredible happened. Centi forgot about being a failure. She forgot about being useless. She even almost forgot about being corrupted. Anxiety and uncertainty had given way to a much-needed moment of pure happiness.

Finally, the three of them flopped down on the sand to catch their breath. (At least, Steven and Centi did, and it was metaphorical breath in her case. Even corrupted gems didn't need to breathe.) She was wet, sandy, salty, and utterly content. As she sat up, she flapped her hands a few times. "I think that I like the beach," she commented.

"Yeah, I like the beach, too!" agreed Steven. "Good thing we live in Beach City and we can come here all the time! Uh, well, _you_ don't live here, Centi, but…you know what I mean."

Amethyst stretched her arms above her head. "Hey, the day of fun has only just begun! Oh, sweet, that rhymed. I'm a poet and didn't know it."

Centi giggled softly. "So, what are we doing next?"

"How about lunch?" suggested Amethyst. "I mean, you like human food, don't you?"

"Um…I like chips."

"She likes chips!" Amethyst chortled and prodded Steven lightly. "Wait until she gets to try some fries!"

…

The city proper was a little disorienting at first. Its buildings were a mash of styles and textures, so unlike the sleek designs of Homeworld architecture; unfamiliar sounds vied for Centi's attention; and of course, there were humans absolutely everywhere. But once she forced herself to relax and not try to analyze everything at once, she found the experience of being in a new place both enjoyable and interesting. She didn't have to 'figure everything out'; it was okay just to watch. She found herself wishing that she'd brought her sketchbook so that she could doodle parts of the foreign landscape around her.

As it turned out, 'fries' were like chips, except warmer and softer. "Like comfort chips!" she exclaimed after she tried them. They were good, but even better was the pizza, which Steven procured while she and Amethyst were playfully trying to steal fries from one another. Pizza was a completely different human food, an amalgamation of exotic tastes coming together as one perfect whole – and it was made even better by the fact that Steven had ordered her some with little spicy peppers on it. Centi had a particular fondness for spicy food.

Then Steven and Amethyst tugged her along to Funland. She tried cotton candy, which was shockingly sweet and had a rather novel texture. She rode a carousel, which involved sitting on an imitation of an Earth animal and going around in circles, and a Ferris wheel, which also went around in circles, except vertically instead of horizontally. From the very top, practically all of Beach City was spread out below her, and Steven pointed out various landmarks and explained what they were. Centi nodded along, though in truth, she was more focused on the view itself than on his commentary. It made her feel like she was a pilot again, in a ship providing her with an aerial view of the Earth.

After that, they went to the arcade, a small building stuffed full of interactive games. The second they stepped through the doorway, Centi cringed and slammed her hands over her ears. Steven and Amethyst looked back at her worriedly.

"Too loud," she muttered, her audio nerves throbbing from the onslaught of beeping and roaring and screaming. It didn't help that every game seemed to be flashing at least a dozen eye-dazzling lights, bombarding her with contradictor stimuli.

Steven apologized to her profusely. "We can leave if you want to. But I wanted to show you something I thought you might like…"

"It's okay, Steven. Go ahead and show me." If she didn't get used to the sounds and lights after a while, she could always inform him that she needed to make a quick exit.

He took her by the arm (carefully making sure that she wouldn't have to take her hands away from her ears) and brought her to one console towards the corner of the arcade. Then he pointed to the human-words displayed over the screen and read them for her: 'Road Killer.'

Centi hesitantly lowered her hands as she examined the machine. "Why does it have a chair?"

"This is a human driving simulator!" he informed her. "Humans drive these things called cars, which are sort of like tiny spaceships that go on the ground. I thought that maybe, since you're a pilot, you might like to try driving! Except, you know, maybe not in a real car, since you've never done this before…"

"Um…okay, I'll try it." She slid into the seat; it wasn't too different from a captain's chair, really, except the controls in front of her were far less sophisticated than even the simplest gem ships. "How do I operate the virtual human ship?"

He brightened at her acceptance of his idea and started pointing to her feet. "Okay, so, that pedal is for going, and that one is for stopping, and that one…doesn't do anything, so forget about it. And you spin the wheel to turn, and that's it! Oh, and you're supposed to crash into everything. But that's just for this game, not for real life."

Centi was slightly scandalized. "Why would I crash into everything? That would damage the ship!"

"Like I said, it's just a game! And games are about doing fun things that you can't do in real life."

While she didn't quite understand why crashing a human-ship could be considered fun, she let Steven insert a quarter and tried the game anyway. Her command of the on-screen vehicle was wavery at first, and she always seemed to overshoot with the frustratingly imprecise steering controls, but it was only a few minutes before she started to get the hang of it.

Nephrites were programmed with full knowledge of all gem spacecraft up to the time of their creation, and they were periodically updated with information on new models to avoid the need for a lengthy training process – but even more than that, their greatest time-saving trait was their general adaptability to vehicles of all sorts. As Centi played Road Killer, she felt like her hands and her eyes, more than her mind itself, were observing patterns and converting them into usable data. Ten minutes later, she was turning the wheel and using the gearshift like she'd been playing human-ship games for thousands of years. Maybe this was a good sign that her acclimation to technology had at least partially survived her corruption; then again, the game's controls were childishly simple compared to her ship.

"YOU'RE HORRIBLE!" blared the game, causing her to start and jerk the wheel for a second. She corrected her course as quickly as possible.

"The game's just saying that because you haven't crashed into anything," Steven assured her quickly. "Besides that, you're doing really good!"

Amethyst was peering over the back of the seat at the screen. "Yeah, you are. We should put you on a game where you _don't_ have to crash constantly; I bet you'd slay!"

Centi smiled to herself, her eye still focused on the movements of the virtual vehicle. "It's not as good as flying," she said. "But it's pretty fun anyway."

…

The sun was almost touching the horizon by the time that the trio was ready to end their day of fun. As they wandered back through the streets, Centi felt not only happy, but _normal_. None of the humans were staring at her single-eyed face or ragged spacesuit. Nobody cared whether she was corrupted or not. She had successfully managed to enjoy several forms of Earth entertainment…and she hadn't experienced a single physical reversion all day.

Amethyst chugged a can of soda that she'd been toting along with her and belched. (Centi had tried soda earlier in the day, but had found the carbonation exceedingly painful, and couldn't help wondering why anyone would choose to ingest such things.) "So, what'd you think of Beach City, corrupted homegirl?" she asked.

"I liked it!" answered Centi brightly. "It's been a good day. Thank you for bringing me out here."

Amethyst slapped her on the back. "You're welcome! It's always nice to take a day off once in a while. Or almost all the time." She chortled at her own remark.

The phrase 'day off' reminded Centi that the time before she had to return to training was limited. Her thoughts must have wandered onto her face, because Steven touched her arm and said, "Don't worry about what comes next, okay? Garnet and Pearl are gonna come up with a new way to help you learn. And they're not gonna make you do it right away, either."

Centi shrugged. She didn't want to talk about it.

Amethyst crushed her soda can in her fist and hurled it over her shoulder. The sun began to look a little more orange as it lowered over the beach. All was quiet and right with the world…until Steven suddenly stopped up short.

"What's up, little dude?" asked Amethyst curiously, but when he pointed ahead of them, all casual laziness vanished from her demeanor.

Standing on the side of the street ahead of them were two small, square, reddish figures.

Centi stiffened, her foot halting in midair. "A-are those…?!"

"Rubies!" exclaimed Amethyst in a whisper.

"Shhh!" hissed Steven. "They haven't seen us yet! Quick, we've gotta get out of sight!"

The three of them scrambled into a nearby alleyway where they wouldn't be immediately spotted, peering out at the two Rubies. One of them had her gem on her lower back; the other's gem was on her cheek, like some kind of massively uneven blush. The back-Ruby was gripping a small handheld device with a design unfamiliar to Centi. Presumably it was something after her time.

"What are they doing here?!" whispered Amethyst angrily. Her fingers were twitching, as if longing to curl around the handle of a whip. "There aren't any monsters around!"

"Looking for us?" suggested Steven softly, before frowning. "But why wouldn't they go to the temple? Everyone knows that's where we live…"

Suddenly, back-Ruby broke off and pointed her device in the direction of the alley. Amethyst was the first to react: she yanked both Centi and Steven out of sight, dragging them further into the shadows. Age-flattened garbage gave slightly under Centi's feet as she stumbled forward –

And nearly collided with a solid metal obstruction. Some human had parked a car at the opposite entrance to the alleyway, rendering them trapped. When Centi whirled around, her eye drilled into the murky light and spotted the shadows of the Ruby duo giving chase.

"W-we're trapped!" she stammered.

Steven shook his head frantically. "We can still go over the car – "

"Or through it!" interjected Amethyst. She grabbed the door handle, and it must have been unlocked, because the door suddenly swung aside to reveal the car's interior. "Yeah, that worked!"

Moments later, one of the Rubies barked, "There they are!"

"Hey, you rebels!" shouted the other one. "Stop right there!"

Steven, Amethyst, and Centi flung themselves into the car at warp speed. Steven slammed the door shut behind them and clicked down on the lock button.

Amethyst eyed him with a frown. "What'd you do that for?!"

"If we run, they'll catch up to us!" he protested. "I figured that this way we could lock them out!"

The Rubies were almost instantaneously pounding at the thick glass window. They yelled orders, but the specific words were lost in the transition between outside and inside.

"All we did was lock ourselves in!" complained Amethyst. "And one of them will be able to bust out the lock, just you wait!"

Now the Rubies were arguing about what to do next. Thanks to their low capacity for intelligence, it would probably take them a little while to realize that they could just forcibly open the car – but Amethyst was right, they'd destroy the lock in an instant once they figured it out. Centi's eye practically pinwheeled to take in her surroundings. Everyone else was thinking of a plan, now she had to help…!

Wait a moment.

She was in a car. _A human-ship_. Her gaze landed on the controls and found them to be functionally identical to those of the game she'd played less than two hours ago. Except for one thing, that is…

"Steven, what is this?" she said, prodding a bunch of jangly metal things dangling to one side of the steering wheel.

"Huh?" He looked over at her distractedly. "Oh, those are keys – "

He cut himself off and exchanged a glance with Amethyst. Apparently they had both just drawn the same conclusion as Centi.

Amethyst nudged Centi into the driver's seat. "Hope you feel like being the captain of a human-ship!"

"Amethyst!" cried Steven. "She doesn't know how to drive!"

Centi shook her head frantically. "I can do it, Steven! The human-ship is easy to operate!"

Amethyst spread her hands. "Look, Steven, I don't know how to drive at all, and your legs are too short to reach the pedals. Centi's a freakin' spaceship captain, and we have to get away from these red jokers! What other choice do we have?!"

Steven bit his lip. "Umm…I guess we have to," he conceded. "But everybody, please buckle up!"

Centi played with the keys until she found that they turned in place, and when they did, the human-ship began to rumble and grumble beneath her. Clearly the engine wasn't particularly efficient, but that didn't matter right now. As long as it was fast enough to get them away from the Rubies…

Amethyst whooped and flung herself into the backseat. Still looking rather doubtful, Steven stretched a vinyl belt first over Centi, then over himself – and not a moment too soon. One of the Rubies had drawn her weapon, a mallet, and was preparing to bring it down on the car door.

"Prepare for takeoff!" shouted Centi, wrenching the gearshift down sharply.

Then she checked the pedals, slammed her foot on the smaller one, and grabbed hold of the steering wheel as they tore into the street.


	7. Distance

Driving for real wasn't really like playing a game.

Watching a pixellated vehicle move along a screen was only a very crude illusion of movement – now that Centi was behind the wheel of a real car, there could be no denying that the metal contraption she was in was truly rushing ahead, that the scenery around her was solid and tangible. The vibrations of the engine rattled through her hypersensitive nerves; the steering wheel pulled and bucked against her hands like something alive. It was a much rougher ride than she was used to.

But all the same, she didn't panic. The sensation of speed didn't terrify her. Because even if a spaceship was much smoother, it also went much faster, and had infinitely more complicated controls. The human-ship only went forward, backward, left, and right. Compared to the machines she was used to driving, it might as well have just been a video game.

She recognized the road with painted lines from Road Killer, and her hands squeezed the steering wheel to keep it within the designated lane, even as her foot pressed unrelentingly on the gas pedal. That was another thing she didn't do very often, having to stay inside a narrow area, because space was usually so vast and open; but all Homeworld pilots had to do precision training to learn proper navigation of asteroid belts or crowded ports. This wasn't much different.

Her eye darted to the side for a microsecond. Steven was in the seat next to her, his fingertips nervously digging into the cushion, while Amethyst whooped and pumped her fists in the backseat.

"Tell me where I'm going!" yelled Centi, doing her very best not to let the tantalizing blur of Beach City distract her.

Steven swallowed hard. "Uhm…keep going straight until…" Suddenly, his eyes blew open wide. " _Red light_!"

"Red light?" she echoed with a frown.

"It means _stop!_ "

Centi switched her foot to the brake pedal and stomped down. As they screeched to a halt, Amethyst scowled incredulously and leaned over the front seats.

"What, are you trying to give the Rubies a chance to catch up to us?!" she yelled. "There are no red lights in a car chase!"

"But it's the rules!" spluttered Steven. "Red for stop, green for go, and yellow for 'if you step on the gas now, they can't give you a ticket'! That's what my dad taught me…!"

For all that Centi understood, they may as well have been arguing in a foreign language. She squeezed the steering wheel impatiently. "Make up your mind, do I stop or go?!"

"Go!" bellowed Amethyst. "No cars are coming anyway!"

She went.

A couple of blocks away, more cars appeared, mainly driving on the other side of the road. They gave the erratically speeding car astonished looks, like they'd never seen a getaway driver before, but Centi didn't care; she had much more pressing matters to worry about. "Which way?!"

"Turn left up ahead!" cried Steven.

As she jerked the steering wheel in the indicated direction, he reached over and hesitantly tapped a small lever sticking out from the dashboard, which made a clicking noise until she'd completed the turn.

Amethyst groaned loudly. "Did you just put on the turn signal?!"

"You have to signal your turns!" he protested. "It's the law!"

"This is a _car chase_!"

"But we've already left the Rubies way behind!"

Centi suddenly realized that the road she was on didn't go much further; she'd either have to turn again or end up driving on the sand. "Which way now?!"

"Right!" yelled Steven and Amethyst in unison.

She yanked the steering wheel, and both of them went tumbling against the opposite side of the car.

Steven clung to his seatbelt nervously. "Uh, you can probably start going a little slower now…"

Centi obliged, lessening the weight of her foot on the gas pedal. Now she could see that the road they were on went straight around the outskirts of Beach City, eventually leading up to the temple, where they could report to Garnet and Pearl what had happened to them. In the moment of relative calm, she looked at the various dials and arrows lit up behind her steering wheel, but they were all inscribed with human lettering that rendered them meaningless to her.

In the back, Amethyst righted herself and leaned over to get a better look out the front window. "Not bad for your first time driving a car, C," she commented.

"Maybe we should teach you about traffic rules before next time," muttered Steven. "Especially since it probably won't be a car chase…"

A few minutes later, they reached the city limits, where they abandoned the human-ship. They left the keys inside for whenever its owner managed to find it again. "At least you didn't break anything!" declared Amethyst cheerfully. "We may have stolen a car, but it could have gone a lot worse!"

Centi shrugged. In the Homeworld army, pilots had constantly borrowed one another's ships in emergency situations, and surely humans were also capable of understanding that she'd had to use whatever resources were available to her in her time of necessity.

After quickly glancing around to ensure that there was no sign of the Rubies, the three of them hurried up the cliff side, silhouetted against the setting sun.

…

"You were _chased_?!" cried Pearl, her hands fluttering with horror as they came to rest on either side of her face. She kept repeating things as if demanding clarification, even though, by Centi's count, this was their third time going through the entire story. "The Rubies _found_ you?!"

Amethyst groaned impatiently. "But we got away!"

"I just…don't understand how this is possible!" Pearl bounded over to Garnet, still squeezing her own cheeks fearfully. "Did you know that this would happen?!"

Garnet shrugged stiffly. "I saw that it was a possibility," she conceded. "But things going wrong is always a possibility. It didn't seem likely that Homeworld would be wandering around Beach City looking for us."

"But they _were!_ And they saw Steven, and…!"

Garnet's hand descended to rest firmly on Pearl's shoulder. "They did what they were supposed to do," she stated. "They didn't risk getting caught out by the Homeworld superiors. They came straight here and told us about it, thanks to Centi's help."

A familiar prickle of self-consciousness darted across Centi's skin. And yet…she understood that, this time, she _had_ done something important. She could be as self-deprecating as she liked, but there was no denying it.

Abruptly, Garnet turned for the warp pad. "Come on. We need to put more distance between us and the Rubies. Let's go to the barn."

"Garnet!" groaned Amethyst dramatically. "Come on! Is running from these guys all we're ever gonna do?!"

Garnet fixed the small quartz with the flat, steely gaze of her visor. "No. But remember what Centi saw yesterday. Until we know what we're up against, the best thing to do is to watch from afar. Besides, Peridot and Lapis need to know about what happened."

"Fiiiiiiine…" Amethyst flopped over to the pad, followed a moment later by Pearl, Steven, and finally Centi.

In the moments before they teleported, Centi leaned over and whispered to Steven, "What is a 'barn'?"

"It's a kind of Earth building," he answered. "Normally animals live there, but Peridot and Lapis live in this one."

And before she could ask any further questions, such as what a 'barn' looked like, or why Peridot and Amethyst had been relegated to living in a building reserved for the storage of nonsentient Earth creatures, the transporting light of the warp pad had plucked them up and deposited them far away from the temple.

Or at least, Centi assumed that this place was far away, as it didn't look anything like Beach City. She inhaled, both seeing and smelling the presence of trees, grass, and other vegetation – but it wasn't really like the jungle around her ship, either. Those plants were twisting, choking growths that consumed any space they could find and could even tear down Homeworld tech with nothing but roots and vines, while these were softer, slighter, leaving room for the ground and the sky to breathe and show their colors. As she stepped forward, following the Crystal Gems on their journey to the barn, the grass felt strangely fresh and springy beneath the soles of her jumpsuit.

In due time, a building appeared in front of them. Centi didn't know very much about human architecture, but so far, the structures she'd seen on Earth had been simple, boxy things, crude and childish in their construction. But this building looked like it had started out with the same basic structure, then sprouted several other, smaller buildings from its various walls and corners. Also, some of the additional buildings were made of a clear shiny substance, and somebody appeared to have flown a human-ship and gotten it stuck just above the door.

She scurried ahead to catch up with Steven. "This is the barn that you spoke of…?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Pretty cool, right?"

"It has a very intriguing appearance," she replied, tilting her head slightly as her eye scanned the various details of the structure.

"If you think so now, just wait until you see the inside."

The door swung open with the grating moan of worn-out hinges, causing Centi to jolt. Peridot peered out at them from the dimly lit interior. "Visitors!" she declared. "I wasn't expecting you to come here today, Steven – oh, and you even brought Centi with you! Let me guess, you just couldn't wait to see my astonishing meep morp gallery?"

Centi stared at a point in the distance, one hand starting to twist in her hair. "I'd love to see your, um, meep morps, Peridot. But…"

"The Rubies have shown up again," interrupted Garnet shortly.

Peridot's eyes widened. "Excuse me?!"

Amethyst took the cue to explain. "Me, Steven, and Centi were just chillin' in Beach City, mindin' our own business, and bam! There they were. We stole somebody's car and drove away!"

"Ahem!" Pearl cleared her throat pointedly. "They _borrowed_ someone's car, because there was no other way to escape. For all we know, the Rubies' commander could have been right behind them!"

Something twinged in the back of Centi's mind. Some kind of memory or bit of knowledge or _something_ , long dormant but briefly stirred out of its sleep by Pearl's words…she tried to prod at it and bring it back to light, but it evaded her grasp, and she let it go without much of a fight. This happened to her intermittently since her corruption. Probably it was nothing important.

Peridot shoved the door opened and beckoned them inside emphatically. "Come on in and tell me everything! Lapis – hey, Lazuli! Come down here, Steven and the other gems have some important stuff to tell us!"

The inside of the barn was so crowded with junk that they were all forced to walk in single file towards the back. Centi looked around, unable to keep herself from gaping at the vast assortment of items on display. Everything from food labels to busted-up machinery to household items altered almost beyond recognition had been gathered here, assembled into new configurations, and arranged in a haphazard gallery of sorts. There were unfamiliar implements hanging from racks on the walls and columns of garbage cans turning the floor into a slalom course. And at the very back of the barn were several dismembered toilets, where Lapis met them, and where Peridot sat down to hear the story of their high-speed escape from the Rubies.

Centi was so distracted by her surroundings that she tuned out the vast majority of it, only coming back to herself several minutes later, when Peridot's voice cut in pointedly: "So they were just wandering around looking for you? Something about that doesn't seem right…"

"Why not?" demanded Amethyst. "Those other Rubies did the same thing before, remember? When they were looking for – "

"But that's not the proper Homeworld method of searching!" interjected Peridot. "As a former agent of Homeworld, I can confidently state that anyone sent to Earth on a recovery mission would be supplemented with the proper amount of tracking technology, even Rubies. _Especially_ Rubies, in fact, since they're too stupid to succeed without the assistance of gem tech!"

Centi blinked, her eye refocusing. "Actually…they did have some kind of technology," she realized aloud. "I remember that one of them had a handheld device, just a little thing. I don't know what it was, though."

Peridot narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Could you describe it?"

"Um…kind of square, and it had a little screen, and…" Her hands coiled uselessly in the air, and she made a few vague sounds. She had a fairly clear image of the device in her mind's eye, but it was proving very difficult to translate into words.

Fortunately, Steven came to her rescue. "I bet she could draw it!" he exclaimed. "Do you guys have any paper and pencils lying around?"

Lapis darted off to one side of the barn and returned with an old plastic pen and a small pad of lined paper. Centi accepted both items gratefully, uncapped the pen, and started to sketch carefully. The sleek, rounded rectangular shape of the device, an antenna fixed to the top of it, some small symbols to suggest an interface… "I didn't get to see every part of it," she admitted. "But this is what I remember."

Peridot's fingers scuttled forward and spun the drawing to face her. She pressed her lips together. "This resembles a low-grade signal tracker," she announced.

"But what signal would they have been tracking?" asked Pearl with a frown, crouching down to get a better look.

"Well, for a tracker of this caliber…there are only a few frequencies that it can detect, and most of those would be used to broadcast the location of valuables, such as weapons and ships." Peridot ran her fingertip along the edge of the paper. "All of which are equipped with beacons so that they can be recovered if they are ever misplaced."

"Maybe they're looking for that ship we got a few months ago?" guessed Steven.

She shook her head. "No. It's not practical to equip _every_ ship with a beacon, and that pod you acquired from the other rubies certainly isn't advanced enough to warrant such measures! But…there is one other option that makes sense. Sometimes, high-ranking gems carry a beacon in their uniform if they know they're going into a dangerous situation or uncharted territory, as a way to ensure that Homeworld can find them if they're in trouble. It allows them to broadcast their location for pickup." She made a derisive little sound. "Not for a worker like _me_ , of course, but maybe some members of the upper and lower court – including warriors…"

"In other words, Jasper," said Lapis softly.

Throughout the conversation, Garnet's usually unflappable face had been growing…not alarmed, exactly, but tense and grim. She appeared to be having a deep inner conversation with herself, and only now did she finally break out of it to speak aloud. "No," she said. "Jasper is bubbled. The Rubies were tracking a signal that led them into town."

"Who, then?" demanded Peridot. "The only ones in town were Steven and Amethyst, who have never been affiliated with Homeworld, and – !" She cut herself off with a soft squeak. "Oh…oh my stars…!"

Centi took a step backward as understanding struck her. Ice seemed to squirm in her stomach. There was a certain amount of logic in the words that she knew were common, and yet it still wasn't enough to make her fully accept them. "I-I was in town, too," she stammered. "But I'd never…!"

"Hush." Garnet held a finger up to her lips. "You haven't done anything wrong. But Peridot is right. Homeworld put beacons in the uniforms of high-ranking gems who were traveling, such as aristocrats, warriors… _and captains_."

And then she snapped her head away, straining to listen for the sound of the Rubies arriving in the countryside, almost certain to become a reality at any minute now that Centi had led them straight here.


End file.
